Cancer 131

Well, here I am again, in the depressing rooftop restaurant of Derby hospital, the food choice consisting of poor quality standard breakfast items. I just havea cup of tea, unfortunately in a cardboard cup which does nothing for the environment, and is called a coffee cup despite its contents. There are ill people around me choosing platefuls of breakfast, which I am sure does nothing for their health. This is a hospital. The food choices are appalling. There is this restaurant, the highlight, which sells poor quality food throughout the day (think pies and chips), and which also contains that well-known gas mark requiring franchise, Subway. I have never eaten a subway, but from the vile artificial smell I suspect what remains of my digestive system would not be impressed.

Other than this restaurant there is a mediocre cafe on the same floor, where they will routinely add milk to the teabag in the water for the tea, always a sign of a lack of understanding of good taste and chemistry. These two are on the 5th floor. On the ground floor, there is the ubiquitous and iniquitous Costa, providers of cups and saucers with the saucer offset from the centre to ensure spillage. As a coffee hater, there is little for me. I went once to drink tea when there was no choice and they offered me cake. It was just after 7am. Who wants cake at breakfast time?

The only other alternative (apart from the university cafe at the other end of the hospital from which I am now excluded, and which is also poor quality) is Marks and Spencer which sells the usual M&S stuff. It is difficult to even get a sandwich as they all contain Mayonnaise, or ‘Mayo’ as presumed lovers of a certain Irish county call it. I do not like the stuff, it ruins the flavour of whatever is being eaten.

I haven’t mentioned the choices when one is an inpatient, and I really shouldn’t.

So, the choices include ultra-high-processed foodstuffs, foods with countless chemicals, and generally poor quality ingredients. This is meant to be a hospital. Good food is essential for health and essential for recovery. There needs to be a wholesale review of the offerings in the hospital to provide a far better quality choice.

Treatment continues apace. My Hickman line is holding out, though the area around is very red, and the point of entry continues to ooze and bleed. I change my dressing most days. I don’t think it will work over the long term. My bloods are ‘normal’, and so my chemotherapy has been authorised. Last week I had a CT scan, and I find out the results next week. So far they have all shown little growth and some shrinkage, so fingers crossed.

Now the weather is better (except it is raining this morning) I am getting a little more exercise. I did 11,000 steps the other day, a rarity for me.

Don’t tell any of the NHS staff, but assuming treatment goes ahead normally today and assuming I don’t have a worse reaction to it than normal, we are heading to the Netherlands for a long weekend. The wife needs her dose of art, and has never been to the Rijksmuseum. Personally, I dread the thought of Amsterdam. I really do not like going to cities now (I never have, but that is a different story). I fear my bladder control (thanks diuretics), my stoma (unpredictable filling and need to change), bumping into people (with a long line emerging from my chest, taped down, my hernia, my stoma. They all make me vulnerable), and generally getting tired very quickly when walking. Crowds are really not my thing now.

I will go to the Rijksmuseum but I might keep out of Amsterdam for the other two days, perhaps head up to the Frisian Islands, or somewhere else as remote as you get in the Netherlands. Ideas please? I would go to Arnhem but I am trying to expand my interests, and yes of course I have been before. There is a bunker museum at the head of the Ijsselmeer, and a windmill museum, so the possibilities are there. I would rather spend a day at aa windmill museum than a day in Amsterdam.

It reminds me of the stag do I went to in Amsterdam, where the group split into two parties. One party headed for the Red Light district, and we (including the stag), hired bikes, and cycled to the coast, where we had an ice cream. That was a good day. We ended with a nice meal and bed by 10pm. That was when I was healthy.